


Skål

by twobirdsonesong



Category: CrissColfer - Fandom, Glee RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Complicated Relationships, Ficlet, M/M, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 00:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8182415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsonesong/pseuds/twobirdsonesong
Summary: Born of this anon ask I got a few weeks ago. This probably isn’t what they were hoping for.  But is it ever?





	

**Rum & Coke**

  
Chris is 19 and does not care that he’s teased mercilessly for his drink of choice. He didn’t grow up in a house that gave out sips of wine at holiday dinners and he’s always had something of a sweet tooth. Coke with a little splash of rum is the perfect way to take in alcohol without really tasting it, which, at this point in his life, is all he wants.

 

So what if his cast mates sit around pounding back cheap beers or cheaper bottles of vodka cut with whatever can be stolen from craft services. If he’s going to drink he might as well enjoy it as best he can, and there’s nothing enjoyable about lukewarm watery beer that tastes worse than the inside of his mouth in the morning.

 

Chris is 19 and working his way up from Coke and rum, and Darren is 23 with a glass of single malt Scotch dangling so casually from one hand.

 

Frustratingly, Chris is still in his mortifying crush phrase when it comes to Darren, though it’s getting easier to share a couch with him at 1am at Naya’s place without feeling like he’s going to shake out of his skin. The rest of the cast is scattered around: playing beer pong; mixing increasingly ridiculous drinks; making out in an armchair. He’s not completely sure when it happened, but at some point in the evening Chris found himself alone on a sofa in a dimly lit room with Darren.

 

Darren is flushed, chatty, and on his third glass of Scotch. Considering the contents of Naya’s kitchen, Chris can only assume that Darren brought the bottle with him. It surprises him as much as it doesn’t. Darren is not as sophisticated as some people want him to be: he burps louder than any man his size should; he sweats through his clothes in an hour of filming; he talks at length about things someone could only know after hours spent scrolling through Wikipedia at 3am. He is not sophisticated, he is not suave – he’s a scruffy musician who only shaves when he has to for the show and swears like it’s a challenge someone put him up to.

 

Chris loves him.

 

“Is that all you’re going to have?” Darren asks. He’s looking at Chris with heavy-lidded eyes and Chris flushes. At least he can blame his pink ears on the rum.

 

“I’m good,” Chris confirms. It’s his second drink of the night and he’s been nursing it for the last two hours. It doesn’t even taste good anymore. The ice has long melted and what’s left is a room temperature, slightly sticky mockery of the drink he’d started out with.

 

“You’re a lightweight, aren’t you?” Darren asks and lifts the glass to his lips and takes a slow drink, as though to prove a point. Ice clinks and Chris watches the bobbing of Darren’s throat as he swallows.

 

“So what?”

 

“Hey man, not a judgment. Just an observation.”

 

Chris shifts. The couch suddenly feels very small, the space between them too narrow. “I didn’t know anyone was monitoring my alcohol consumption,” he counters.

 

Darren shrugs. “Compared to these guys it kind of stands out. Not in a bad way, mind. I don’t mean to imply anything, about you. Or them.”

 

“I don’t really like the taste,” Chris admits.

 

“Maybe you just haven’t had the right drink.”

 

Darren’s eyes are dark, his voice pitched low, and Chris realizes he’s flirting. Maybe he’s been flirting the entire night. Maybe longer. Chris blushes all the way down to his bellybutton and hopes Darren can’t tell. He couldn’t blame that on anything but his own crush. Darren is open, relaxed, slouching with the kind of effortless grace Chris will always envy him for. It would be easy to move across the couch and into Darren’s space, to replace the taste of Scotch with his own lips.

 

But Chris doesn’t. He can’t. He’s 19 and there is too much at stake for a whim and a fancy.

 

“Yeah,” Chris finally says, and downs the rest of his drink. “Maybe.”

 

**G & T**

 

Chris cannot sit alone at a bar. He cannot sit alone with a beer or vodka or anything else and drink away his sorrows while a bartender gives him sympathetic looks he pretends not to notice. There’s always someone who would see him, always someone who would know him. Someone who would tell. And even if there weren’t, he’d worry every moment about finding a grainy photo of himself alone and hunched over a grimy wooden bar before he even got home. It’s exactly the kind of photo he works so hard to avoid. Heartbreak is hard enough to deal with it.

 

Instead, Chris sits in his bedroom in the dark nursing a gin and tonic out of a plastic cup emblazoned with the Shubert logo. With the lights out and the curtains open, Los Angeles is bright through the tall windows, disarmingly pretty in the dead of the night. Chris drinks and does not feel the burn on his tongue.

 

He doesn’t even remember buying the gin; he probably didn’t. Darren probably left it behind; one of the many things he didn’t take with him. It tastes bitter and sweet and Chris wishes he hated it. But he’s 25 and the things he enjoyed six years ago are no longer the things he wants now.

 

Chris is quick to blame and quicker to anger, and sitting alone in his bedroom, it suddenly feels as though all he has is a cup that’s carried better memories. The sun eventually rises, but it takes all night.

 

**Tequila**

 

Chris is not a fan of tequila. He doesn’t like the smell, he doesn’t like the taste; he really doesn’t like the splitting headache he inevitably winds up with after only half a margarita.

 

He doesn’t even like tequila when he’s licking it out of Darren’s bellybutton and off his bare chest. Though it helps.

 

Chris shows up at the house and is given a beer before he even clears the front yard. Dozens of people are already milling about, laughing in the spring sunshine. He tries to remember names, but can’t. It doesn’t seem to matter; the beer is bitter on his tongue and he tries to enjoy it.

 

Darren arrives alone half an hour later. Chris turns in his direction just as Darren walks into the yard. It happens sometimes, the inexplicable pull towards him, the unseen tie that lets Chris find Darren in any crowd. It frustrates Chris; infuriates him, but there’s nothing he seems to be able to do about it.

 

The party swirls around Darren. People fall into an orbit around him Darren doesn’t even seem to know he has. Hands pat his back, arms pull him into a hug, and someone gives him a beer and a shot of something clear. He laughs as he takes it and Chris swears he can hear it even over the thumping music and the dull roar of the guests.

 

Chris wants to leave. He wants to leave and is fifteen seconds from ditching his beer and sneaking out the back when Darren catches his eye across the lawn. Chris’ whole body warms at the smile that breaks out across Darren’s face. He swears no one else gets to see that same smile.

 

“Fuck,” Chris mutters to himself as Darren saunters through the crowd towards him with unerring accuracy.

 

“Hey!  Wasn’t sure you’d be here.” Darren hugs him, already a little sweaty and warm, and Chris tries not to be awkward.

 

“And yet here I am.”

 

“Here you are.” Something complicated passes across Darren’s face, but he wipes it away with another smile and scoffs at the still half-full beer growing warm in Chris’ hand.

 

“We’ll get your tolerance up yet!” He chirps.

 

“I don’t know why everyone wants to turn me into an alcoholic,” Chris grumbles, only a little annoyed.

 

“It’s not about that,” Darren shakes his head. There’s already sweat in the hollow of his throat, though it’s not that hot out. “It’s about bringing you into the present. The now. Stop laughing. You’re always three steps ahead, you know? You’re always thinking about the thing after the next thing you want to accomplish, the next thing you want to do, to be. You’re never here. Right here. You’re always over there.”

 

“And you think getting me drunk is the solution?”

 

Darren shrugs. “I think you probably shouldn’t listen to anything I have to say.”

 

“But you’re gonna say it anyway.”

 

“You need to loosen up,” Darren tells him, not meanly. “Don’t give me that look. I’m not saying you’re an uptight asshole. I’m not saying you don’t have fun. You do. I’ve been in your trailer; you’re fun. Life of the party when you want to be. But I’m saying you don’t really live.”

 

Chris blinks. “Wow.”

 

“Look at this. Look at where we are,” Darren gestures to the house, the party.

 

“A bungalow in the Van Nuys?”

 

Darren shakes his head. “Look beyond that.”

 

“It’s nothing special.”

 

“But it is. It could be. If you let it. We could make it special. You and me, okay? We could make it this a fucking amazing night.”

 

Chris is skeptical. He’s always skeptical about the kind of rampant optimism and good cheer Darren tries to carry with him. But it’s Darren, and Chris has been soft for him since he met him.

 

“Okay,” Chris says finally and Darren’s whole face brightens.

 

“Okay?”

 

Chris nods and downs the rest of his beer in one go.

*******

Chris loses the next few hours to tequila, chips, and piñatas full of condoms and packets of lube until he finds himself inside the house doing body shots.

 

Chris doesn’t even like tequila, but Darren is splayed out across the kitchen table, giggling and sweating as Chris rushes to catch the liquor with his mouth before it goes to waste. The hair on Darren’s chest rasps against Chris’ tongue and they both shiver. The salt of his skin is a revelation; the heat of his flushed body is a benediction. Dimly, Chris can hear people he hardly knows cheering him on, but his world is focused on the sharp tang of Darren’s skin and the burst of cheap, earthy tequila.

 

Darren sits up, swaying a little, and reaches for Chris instead of his shirt, which is a stained purple puddle on the kitchen floor. His mouth is wet with tequila, too, shining obscenely, and tastes of salsa and salt. Chris takes the kiss, moaning and eager, because he can, and because he wants to.

 

Chris is 21. An adult. He can go to a vaguely inappropriate Cinco De Mayo party with his cast mates and drink without worry or reproach. He can fall in love and stay in love with someone he can’t have. He can kiss this man with impunity, open-mouthed and aching. He can regret everything and nothing as he pleases.

 

“Do you wanna get out of here?” Darren asks, panting breath hot against Chris’ cheek.

 

“Yeah.”

**Whiskey Neat**

 

The first time Chris tasted whiskey it was Christmastime and he was nine years old. His grandfather had a glass after dinner and he’d offered it to Chris with a wink and a grin. Chris remembers the lights of the Christmas tree in the corner and the smear of spilled gravy on the tablecloth and his mother scolding his grandfather without much heat to it. But he doesn’t remember if he liked the drink or not. It didn’t exactly matter.

 

The second time he tastes whiskey is from Darren’s lips.

 

“Why do you drink this?” Chris asks, looking pointedly at the glass in Darren’s hand. They’re in Darren’s apartment, in his bedroom, looking at half-packed suitcases and not doing much packing. “You look like an asshole.”

 

“I am an asshole,” Darren agrees, smirking.

 

“You’re not a 60-year-old man in tweed.”

 

“You don’t have to be 60 to enjoy a good drink. And this is a good drink.”

 

“I think you drink too much,” Chris says, and doesn’t mean it. The way Darren laughs tells Chris he didn’t take it the wrong way.

 

“My dad gave me this bottle to celebrate.”

 

That catches Chris attention. “Celebrate what?”

 

Darren blinks slowly and his mouth twists in a way Chris has never quite been able to decipher. “Don’t you know?”

 

Chris shrugs. In a couple days he’s going to lose Darren to the road for a month; it doesn’t exactly feel like a cause for celebration.

 

“You ever had this?” Darren asks and holds the glass out to Chris.

 

“Once, I think. A while ago. Wasn’t really my thing, I don’t think.”

 

Darren gets that look in his eye Chris is becoming intimately familiar with; the one that says an idea has formed and won’t be changed for hell or high water.

 

“Let’s see if we can’t change your mind.”

 

Chris watches, breath quickening, as Darren takes a sip of the whiskey and then sets the glass down on the dresser. He reaches for Chris, hooking his fingers in his belt loops, and tugs him closer.

 

There’s whiskey left on Darren’s lips and tongue when he kisses Chris, slow and careful, like he’s making sure he gets the taste of smoke and oak.

 

He does.


End file.
